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metronews.ca
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
Smallville had a good run as a television show. handout
scene
The many faces of Superman
Not the only one
left from his planet.
There have been many
incarnations of the
superhero character,
but they always have a
common thread
In
FOcUs
Richard Crouse
scene@metronews.ca
Superman is one of the most
famous characters in all of
pop culture and yet very few
actors have played the Metropolis
Marvel.
This weekend in Man of
Steel the square-jawed Henry
Cavill becomes the latest to
bring the Last Son of Krypton
to life on the big screen, joining
a list that dates back to
1941 when Mel Blanc voiced
the superhero in a cartoon
called Goofy Groceries.
Bud Collyer next voiced
Superman in a series of animated
Oscar-nominated
short films. The actor played
Brandon Routh handout Christopher Reeve handout
the character three separate
times: on the radio, in this
series and the late 1960s cartoon
show The New Adventures
of Superman.
The Collyer years brought
with them some innovations
to the character.
In June 1943, when the actor
took some time off, the
radio show’s writers came up
with the idea of kryptonite to
explain his absence. While
Bud sunned himself, the Big
S was held prisoner under a
sheet of the radioactive element.
Six years later the comic
books adopted the toxic ore
and it has been part of Superman’s
story ever since.
Animators on the original
series felt that Superman’s
ability to leap buildings in a
single bound looked strange
on screen, so with Detective
Comics Inc.’s permission,
they had him fly instead.
The first live-action Supermen
were Kirk Alyn and
George Reeves. Alyn was a
Broadway actor who played
the Man of Tomorrow in
Atom Man vs. Superman, reportedly
the highest grossing
American movie serial ever,
but couldn’t sustain a career
in film after he retired the
cape. In 1981 he starred in a
spoof called Superbman: The
Other Movie, partially set on
Planet Krapton.
Typecast
09
Christopher Reeve, who
was paralyzed after a horse
riding accident, and passed
away in 2004, once asked
Sean Connery how to avoid
being typecast.
• Connery said. “First you
have to be good enough
that they ask you to play
it again and again.”
George Reeves became a
mega star playing Superman
in 102 episodes of Adventures
of Superman, but later felt
his popularity as the character
inhibited his ability to
earn more serious roles. The
Reeves biopic Hollywoodland,
starring Ben Affleck,
examines the actor’s life and
mysterious death.
Others played Superman
— John Newton, Gerard
Christopher, Dean Cain, Tom
Welling, and Brandon Routh
— with varying degrees of
success, but the best-known
has to be Christopher Reeve,
who starred in four Big Blue
movies between 1978 to 1987.